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California State University at Stanislaus and its private foundation violated public records laws and will have to release the speakers contract with Sarah Palin they had tried to keep secret, a judge has ruled. The details of Palin's contract to speak at a June 25 fundraiser for the foundation became national news last spring after foundation officials refused to tell state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, how much Palin would be paid. Yee has been trying to change a state law that shields campus foundations from public scrutiny. The Palin story grew more bizarre in April after students found discarded...

Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Dining Services Earth Hour Event: On Saturday, March 27, at 8:30 p.m. Shafer Court Dining Center and Jonah’s will take part in Earth Hour — the world’s largest climate change event. By simply turning out all nonessential lighting for one hour, Dining Services will join tens of millions of concerned citizens through...out the world in calling for action to save the planet. The locations will remain open, but with limited lighting during this hour. For more information about the VCU event, contact tmhighsmith@vcu.edu.

[snip] At this point, only one of 39 bills that the president has signed has been posted for five days in advance. (The DTV Delay Act was actually not held five days after formal presentment, but the White House posted it after the final version had passed Congress.) Twenty-four other bills have been held at the White House five days or more before the President has signed them. They just haven’t been posted.

A lack of Vitamin D, due to reduced sunlight, has been linked to depression and the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but research by the University of Warwick shows there is no clear link between the levels of vitamin D in the blood and depression. Exposure to sunlight stimulates vitamin D in the skin and a shortage of sunlight in the winter has been put forward as one possible cause of SAD. However Warwick Medical School researchers, led by Dr Oscar Franco, have discovered low levels of vitamin D in the blood may not be connected to depression. The...

Can Vitamin D Save Your Life?New studies highlight the importance of the forgotten vitamin. by Mariana Gosnell For years doctors believed that vitamin D, sometimes called the “sunshine vitamin” because sunlight triggers the body to produce it, was important primarily in preventing rickets (a softening of the bones) in children. Once milk became fortified with vitamin D, rickets pretty much disappeared, and the problem of vitamin D deficiency seemed to have been solved. But according to Michael F. Holick, director of the Vitamin D, Skin, and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University Medical Center, who has spent 30 years studying...

Exposure To Sunlight May Decrease Risk Of Advanced Breast Cancer By Half ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2007) — A research team from the Northern California Cancer Center, the University of Southern California, and Wake Forest University School of Medicine has found that increased exposure to sunlight -- which increases levels of vitamin D in the body -- may decrease the risk of advanced breast cancer. In a study reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the researchers found that women with high sun exposure had half the risk of developing advanced breast cancer, which is cancer that has spread beyond the...

China has darkened over the past half-century. Where has all the sunshine gone? The usual suspect, at least to a climatologist, would be cloud cover. But in the most comprehensive study to date of overcast versus cloud-free days in China, a team led by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, reporting in the current advance online issue of Geophysical Research Letters, has found that cloud cover has been decreasing for the past 50 years. Eliminating clouds from the dimming equation now leaves little doubt that human activity, in the form of a nine-fold increase in fossil fuel emissions...

Scientists are excited about a vitamin again. But unlike fads that sizzled and fizzled, the evidence this time is strong and keeps growing. If it bears out, it will challenge one of medicine's most fundamental beliefs: that people need to coat themselves with sunscreen whenever they're in the sun. Doing that may actually contribute to far more cancer deaths than it prevents, some researchers think. The vitamin is D, nicknamed the "sunshine vitamin" because the skin makes it from ultraviolet rays. Sunscreen blocks its production, but dermatologists and health agencies have long preached that such lotions are needed to prevent...

Sunlight is increasing on Earth By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent (Filed: 06/05/2005) More sunlight is reaching the Earth's surface than it was 15 years ago, scientists reveal today. American researchers say there has been a four per cent rise in the amount of solar radiation reaching the planet's surface since 1990. Several studies have shown that up until the late 1980s, four to six per cent less sunlight penetrated the atmosphere than during the 1950s. Researchers believe the shift could be explained by the varying quantity and composition of aerosols, tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the air. Other...

LONDON (Reuters) - People born in May in the northern hemisphere have a higher than average risk of developing multiple sclerosis, researchers said on Tuesday. An analysis of data from studies of more than 42,000 people in Canada, Britain, Denmark and Sweden showed that May babies have a 13 percent increased chance of suffering from the illness later in life, but that having a November birthday decreased the average odds by 19 percent. "If you are born in May, your risk is higher than any other month and if you are born in November your risk is lower than any...

Sun and hydrogen 'to fuel future' By Jo Twist BBC News Online science and technology staff Turning sunlight into hydrogen could be the future Capturing sunlight to make enough hydrogen fuel to power cars and buildings has been brought a step closer by a British research company. Hydrogen Solar says it has managed to convert more than 8% of sunlight directly into hydrogen with fuel cell technology it has specially developed. For an energy source to be commercially viable, it must reach an efficiency of 10%, which is an industry standard. Hydrogen power, a renewable energy, has the potential...